Hardcover
180 pages

$75.00 plus $15.65 postage within Australia

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Contents

Florence Fowler’s Scrapbooks provides an insight into a remarkable woman. In 1906, Florence Fowler née Ayers (1877–1966) won the inaugural South Australian Women’s Amateur Golf Championship – an event she won again in 1910, 1911, 1912 and 1922. She was also the runner-up in the 1903, 1910 and 1912 Australian Women’s Amateur Golf Championships and the 1932 Swiss Ladies’ Amateur Championship. The previous year, capping off a long and successful competitive career, Florence became Australian golf’s first female international title holder when she won the Italian Ladies’ Open Championship. Preserved in the collection of the Royal Adelaide Golf Club (where she also won three club championships), Florence’s scrapbooks and photo albums are intriguing records of women’s golf in Australia, Great Britain and Europe during the interwar years of the early 20th century.

Foreword by Gillian Kirkwood

Women’s Golf History can be so boring … just a list of results, championships won and matches lost. This book is something different. Florence Ayers, later Mrs Maxwell Fowler, led such an interesting life, first in South Australia and later all over the United Kingdom and Europe, and golf played a major part in her existence. Her story comes alive through the photo albums and artwork that she carried with her on her travels, and which her niece donated to the Royal Adelaide Golf Club which was where Florence first showed promise as a golfer.

Looking through all her many achievements, and the Italian Open Championship is surely the pinnacle of Florence’s golfing success, I was drawn to the statement that she was Captain of the Lady Golfers Club for not just one, but two years, in the late 1920s. This was a time when golf was at its most elegant, with film stars, aristocracy and the ordinary golfer mixing together – and Florence was part of that world. Her albums include many of the golfing stars of the time, but also includes such rarities as Douglas Fairbanks and Bobby Jones in the same photograph.

As explained in the book, the Lady Golfers Club was not a Golf Club as we know it; it had no course, but through its central London location it became a great meeting place for overseas and home players as it had accommodation, dining facilities and meeting rooms. It also housed the office of the Ladies Golf Union, with the formidable Miss Macfarlane at the helm. By 1938 the Club also housed the Women Golfers Museum. I have been closely involved with both of these organisations, and feel a close affinity to Florence as she held meetings at the Lady Golfers Club, where, if I had lived at that time, I would be visiting myself, and might have met her in person.

Andrew Baker is to be commended for making such a readable story out of the scrapbooks and albums Florence left to posterity. 

Gillian Kirkwood, August 2024

Past (and last) President of the Ladies Golf Union
Chairman of Trustees of the Women Golfers Museum
Director of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews Trust (World Golf Museum)

About Gillian Kirkwood

Gillian Kirkwood is a past Ladies Golf Union (LGU) Councilor and past Scottish Ladies’ Golfing Association Chairman. She is also a highly experienced rules official. Reflecting her keen interest in the history of ladies’ golf, Gillian chaired the Board of Trustees of the Women Golfers’ Museum. Mrs Kirkwood was appointed president of the LGU during its merger with the R&A in 2017. She owns and operates the Heritage of Golf Museum with her husband, David, in the pro shop of Gullane Golf Club in East Lothian.